It is known in the art to provide information to users making calls to merchants before, during, or after such call is made. Existing systems use existing time periods used in actually making or signaling the making, of or the ability to make a connection between the caller and the called party. So-called dial tones, ring tones, call tones and busy tones have been converted in these systems to information, similar to caller identification (“ID”) and reverse caller ID or the like.